The University of Liverpool is a public university based in the city of Liverpool, England. Founded as a college in 1881, it gained its royal charter in 1903 with the ability to award degrees and is also known to be one of the six original "red brick" civic universities. It comprises three faculties organised into 35 departments and schools. It is a founding member of the Russell Group, the N8 Group for research collaboration and the University Management school is AACSB accredited.[6][7]

In 1994 the university was a founding member of the Russell Group, a collaboration of twenty leading research-intensive universities, as well as a founding member of the N8 Group in 2004. In the 21st century physicists, engineers and technicians from the University of Liverpool were involved in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, working on two of the four detectors in the LHC.[15]

The university has produced nine Nobel Prize winners, from the fields of science, medicine, economics and peace. The Nobel laureates include the physician Sir Ronald Ross, physicist Charles Barkla, the physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington, physicist Sir James Chadwick, chemist Sir Robert Robinson, chemist Har Gobind Khorana, physiologist Rodney Porter, economist Ronald Coase and physicist Joseph Rotblat. Sir Ronald Ross was also the first British Nobel laureate in 1902. The University is also associated with Professors Ronald Finn and Sir Cyril Clarke who jointly won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 1980 and Sir David Weatherall who won the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science in 2010. These Lasker Awards are popularly known as America's Nobels.[16] .

Over the 2013/2014 academic year, members of staff took part in numerous strikes after staff were offered a pay rise of 1% which unions equated to a 13% pay cut since 2008. The strikes were supported by both the university's Guild of Students and the National Union of Students.[17] Some students at the university supported the strike, occupying buildings on campus.[18]

Campus and facilities

The university is mainly based around a single urban campus approximately five minutes walk from Liverpool City Centre, at the top of Brownlow Hill and Mount Pleasant. Occupying 100 acres, it contains 192 non-residential buildings that house 69 lecture theatres, 114 teaching areas and state-of-the-art research facilities.

The main site is divided into three faculties: Health and Life Sciences; Humanities and Social Sciences; and Science and Engineering. The Veterinary Teaching Hospital (Leahurst) and Ness Botanical Gardens are based on the Wirral Peninsula. There was formerly a marine biology research station at Port Erin on the Isle of Man until it closed in 2006.

Fifty-one residential buildings, on or near the campus, provide 3,385 rooms for students, on a catered or self-catering basis. The centrepiece of the campus remains the University's original red brick building, the Victoria Building. Opened in 1892, it has recently been restored as the Victoria Gallery and Museum, complete with cafe and activities for school visits Victoria Gallery and Museum, University of Liverpool.

In 2011 the university made a commitment to invest £660m into the 'Student Experience', £250m of which will reportedly be spent on Student Accommodation. Announced so far have been two large On-Campus halls of residences (the first of which, Vine Court, opened September 2012, new Veterinary Science facilities, and a £10m refurbishment of the Liverpool Guild of Students. New Central Teaching Laboratories for physics, earth sciences, chemistry and archaeology were opened in autumn 2012.[19]

In 2013, the University of Liverpool opened a satellite campus in Finsbury Square in London, offering a range of professionally focussed masters programmes.[20]

Central Teaching Hub

The Central Teaching Hub is a large multi-use building that houses a recently refurbished Lecture Theatre Block (LTB) and state of the art teaching facilities (Central Teaching Labs, CTL) for the Departments of Chemistry, Physics and Environmental Sciences, within the University's Central City Centre Campus. It was completed and officially opened in September 2012 with an estimated project cost of £23m.[21] The Main building, the '"Central Teaching Laboratory"' is built around a large atrium and houses seven separate laboratories that can accommodate 1,600 students at a time. A flexible teaching space, computing centre, multi-departmental teaching spaces and communal work spaces can also be found inside. The adjoining University Lecture Block building contains four Lecture rooms and further social spaces.[22]

Sustainability

In 2008 the University of Liverpool was voted joint seventeenth greenest university in Britain by WWF supported company Green League.[23] This represents an improvement after finishing 55th in the league table the previous year.[24]

The position of the university is determined by point allocation in departments such as Transport, Waste management, sustainable procurement and Emissions among other categories; these are then transpired into various awards.[25] Liverpool was awarded the highest achievement possible in Environmental policy, Environmental staff, Environmental audit, Fair trade status, Ethical investment policy and Waste recycled while also scoring points in Carbon emissions, Water recycle and Energy source.[citation needed]

Liverpool was the first among UK universities to develop their desktop computer power management solution, which has been widely adopted by other institutions.[26] The university has subsequently piloted other advanced software approaches further increasing savings.[27] The university has also been at the forefront of using the Condor HTC computing platform in a power saving environment. This software, which makes use of unused computer time for computationally intensive tasks usually results in computers being left turned on.[28] The university has demonstrated an effective solution for this problem using a mixture of Wake-on-LAN and commercial power management software.[29]

The university is a research-based university with 33,000 students pursuing over 450 programmes spanning 54 subject areas. It has a broad range of teaching and research in both arts and sciences, and the University of Liverpool School of Medicine established in 1835 is today one of the largest medical schools in the UK. It also has strong links to the neighbouring Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

In September 2008, Sir Howard Newby took up the post of Vice Chancellor of the University, following the retirement of Sir Drummond Bone.

Faculties

Since 2009, teaching departments of the University have been divided into three faculties: Science and Engineering, Health and Life Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences. Each faculty is headed by an Executive Pro-Vice-Chancellor, who is responsible for all schools in the faculty.[31]

In the Complete University Guide 2013, published in The Independent, the University of Liverpool was ranked 31st out of 124, based on nine measures,[43] while The Times Good University Guide 2008 ranked Liverpool 34th out of 113 universities.[44]The Sunday Times university guide recently ranked the University of Liverpool 27th out of 123.[45] In 2010, The Sunday Times has ranked University of Liverpool 29th of 122 institutions nationwide. In 2008 the THE-QS World University Rankings rated University of Liverpool 99th best in the world, and 137th best worldwide in 2009. In 2011 the QS World University Rankings[46] ranked the university in 123rd place, up 14. Times Higher Education are publishing a separate ranking soon. In the Times Good University Guide 2013, the University of Liverpool was ranked 29th. Liverpool is ranked 122nd in the world (and 15th in the UK) in the 2016 Round University Ranking.[47]

The 2018 U.S. News & World Report ranks Liverpool 129th in the world.[48]

The Research Excellence Framework for 2014 has confirmed the University of Liverpool's reputation for internationally outstanding research. Chemistry, Computer Science, General Engineering, Archaeology, Agriculture, Veterinary & Food Science, Architecture, Clinical Medicine, and English, are ranked in the top 10 in the UK for research excellence rated as 4* (world-leading) or 3* (internationally excellent), and also performed particularly well in terms of the impact of their research.[49] The Computer Science department was ranked 1st in UK for 4* and 3* research, with 97% of the research being rated as world-leading or internationally excellent – the highest proportion of any computer science department in the UK.[50] The Chemistry department was also ranked 1st in the UK with 99% of its research rated as 4* world leading or 3* internationally excellent [51]

In terms of average UCAS points of entrants, Liverpool ranked 40th in Britain in 2014.[55] The university gives offers of admission to 83.1% of its applicants, the 7th highest amongst the Russell Group.[56]

According to the 2017 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, approximately 12% of Liverpool's undergraduates come from independent schools.[57] In the 2016-17 academic year, the university had a domicile breakdown of 72:3:25 of UK:EU:non-EU students respectively with a female to male ratio of 55:45.[58]

Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

In 2006 the university became the first in the UK to establish an independent university in China, making it the world's first Sino-British university.[8][9][10] Resulting from a partnership between the University of Liverpool and Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University is the first Sino-British university between research led universities, exploring new educational models for China.[59]

The campus is situated in Suzhou Industrial Park in the eastern part of Suzhou in the province of Jiangsu, 90 km west of Shanghai. It is a science and engineering university with a second focus in English, recognised by the Chinese Ministry of Education as a "not for profit" educational institution. The University offers undergraduate degree programmes in the fields of Science, Engineering, and Management. Students are rewarded with a University of Liverpool degree as well as a degree from XJTLU. The teaching language is English.

Student life

University Halls

Vine Court, the university's 2nd newest £40 million on campus halls

The university offers a wide selection of accommodation that are on campus as well as student villages off campus. As part of a £660 million investment in campus facilities and student experience, the university has built 3 new on campus halls, while refurbishing existing accommodation.[60] The accommodation offered currently by the university for 2014/2015 academic year are listed below:

Campus

Crown Place

Philharmonic Court

Vine Court

Dover Court

Mulberry Court

Tudor Close

Melville Grove

Off Campus

Carnatic Student Village

Lady Mountford House

Morton House

Rankin Hall

Salisbury Hall

McNair Hall

Greenbank Student Village

Derby & Rathbone Halls

Sport

University of Liverpool's Sports Centre

The University of Liverpool has a proud sporting tradition and has many premier teams in a variety of sports. The current sporting project comes under the title of Sport Liverpool and offers nearly 50 different sports ranging from football, rugby, cricket and hockey to others such as windsurfing, lacrosse and cheerleading.

Many of the sports have both male and female teams and most are involved in competition on a national scale. BUCS is the body which organises national university competitions involving 154 institutions in 47 sports. Most sports involve travelling to various locations across the country, mainly on Wednesday afternoons.

Two other prominent competitions are the Christie Championships[61] and the Varsity Cup. The Christie Cup is an inter-university competition between Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. The Varsity Cup is a popular "derby" event between Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool.

Rodney Porter (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1972) for his discovery of the structure of antibodies.

Ronald Coase (awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991) for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy.

Further reading

Rigg, J. Anthony (1968) "A comparative history of the libraries of Manchester and Liverpool Universities up to 1903", in: Saunders, W. L., ed. University and Research Library Studies: some contributions from the University of Sheffield Post-graduate School of Librarianship and Information Science. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968